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I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, 'Can't you write anything normal?'
Octavia E. Butler -
All that you touchYou Change. All that you ChangeChanges you. The only lasting truthIs Change. GodIs Change.
Octavia E. Butler
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She glanced at him. 'What gods do you respect?''None.''And why not?''I help myself,' he said.
Octavia E. Butler -
Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you're afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It's about not being able to stop at all.
Octavia E. Butler -
Life was treasure. The only treasure.
Octavia E. Butler -
Hollywood wants to go for the flash, because that's what a lot of them think science fiction is.
Octavia E. Butler -
We're all capable of climbing so much higher than we usually permit ourselves to suppose.
Octavia E. Butler -
People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent - or habit - was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.
Octavia E. Butler
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I lost an arm on my last trip home.
Octavia E. Butler -
You are horror and beauty in rare combination.
Octavia E. Butler -
Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.
Octavia E. Butler -
Movies are extremely imitative of one another. Whatever works, people will try to do it.
Octavia E. Butler -
To get along with God, Consider the consequences of your behavior. Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Octavia E. Butler -
The lovely thing about writing is, well, two things. One, writing fiction allows us to bring an order to our lives that doesn't exist in real life. And two, it allows us to create human characters that we know better than we will ever know anyone in real life.
Octavia E. Butler
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'I didn’t want to scare you. We don’t want to scare anyone.''No? Well, sometimes it’s a good thing to scare people. Sometimes fear is all that will keep them from doing stupid things.'
Octavia E. Butler -
'Yes,' he said, 'intelligence does enable you to deny facts you dislike. But your denial doesn’t matter. A cancer growing in someone’s body will go on growing in spite of denial. And a complex combination of genes that work together to make you intelligent as well as hierarchical will still handicap you whether you acknowledge it or not.'
Octavia E. Butler -
The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing.
Octavia E. Butler -
As a black and as a woman, I didn't think that I would really want to live in any of the eras before this, because I would inevitably be worse off. I would have spent more time struggling just to prove I was human than doing my work.
Octavia E. Butler -
Science fiction, extrasensory perception, and black people are judged by the worst elements they produce.
Octavia E. Butler -
I'm very happy alone.
Octavia E. Butler
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In countries where there are no racial differences or no religious differences, people find other reasons to set aside one certain group of people and generally spit in their direction.
Octavia E. Butler -
'Your God doesn’t care about you at all,' Travis said.'All the more reason to care about myself and others.'
Octavia E. Butler -
Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers.
Octavia E. Butler -
The major tragedies in life, there's just no compensation. But the minor ones you can always write about. It's my way of dealing, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than psychiatrists. The story, you see, will get you through.
Octavia E. Butler